Technology and
children
While adults have resources such as Alter’s
book to help them process through our new addiction, children are a different
matter altogether
My sister Seeta Pai, who holds a doctoral degree from Harvard
University in human development, has worked throughout her career to apply this
science to the education of children. She currently works for the Boston
affiliate of the US’s Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio
(NPR) on educational uses of media. Earlier, during another stint, she also
worked to oversee the educational content in television shows such as Sesame
Street (or Galli Galli Sim Sim here in India, which Seeta helped
launch). In between, she also worked for some years for a non-profit media
watchdog called Common Sense Media in San Francisco.
Common Sense
claims to be the leading independent non-profit organization dedicated to
helping children thrive in a world of media and technology. The organization says
it empowers parents, teachers and policymakers by providing unbiased
information, trusted advice and innovative tools to help them harness the power
of media and technology as a positive force in all children’s lives.
Media and
technology are at the very centre of all our lives today—especially our
children’s. According to Common Sense, today’s children, at least in the US,
have more than 50 hours of screen time every week. The organization believes
that the media content children consume and create has a profound impact on
their social, emotional, cognitive and physical development. While learning how
to use media and technology wisely is an essential skill for life and learning
in the 21st century, Common Sense says that parents, teachers and policymakers
struggle to keep up with the rapidly changing digital world in which our
children live and learn.
Most of us
who aren’t millennials grew up in a world where our access to technology was
limited, though I must admit we did have avenues to get addicted to
non-technological dangers such as nicotine. The explosion of technology in the
last couple of decades, as well as in the number of people coming online (like
in India, where according to a somewhat condescending article in The Wall
Street Journal the “good morning” WhatsApp messages sent by millions of
newly online Indians are “clogging” up the internet) has led to a new source of
addiction which we do not yet completely understand.
That said,
there are plenty of attempts being made to categorize this new source of
addiction, and books have been written about it, including one entitled Irresistible
– The Rise of Addictive Technology and The Business of Keeping Us Hooked by
Adam Alter. In an interview to NPR, Alter said: “Ten years ago, before the iPad
and iPhone were mainstream, the average person had an attention span of about
12 seconds.” Now, he says, “research suggests that there has been a drop from
12 to 8 seconds—shorter than the attention span of the average goldfish, which
is 9 seconds.” Apart from my jaw dropping like a goldfish’s when I read this, I
couldn’t help but question why Alter thinks we were only 3 seconds better than
the average goldfish to start off with! But that is a philosophical question
which is beyond the scope of today’s column.
While adults
have resources such as Alter’s book to help them process through our new
addiction, children are a different matter altogether. Most of today’s new
parents are befuddled by how to channel their children’s attention away from
technology when needed. In my own case, I have to sorrowfully admit that I was
unable to divert my own children’s attention away from screens as much as I
would have liked to. I would have been glad, when they were much younger, had
there been guidelines established of the sort that Common Sense now espouses.
Seeta is
luckier; her children are over a decade younger than mine, and she is an expert
on the subject. She says that the balanced and guided use of technology can
actually be beneficial for children’s learning. She thinks a nutritional
analogy is apt. Just like you wouldn’t ban all food, you pay attention to your
children’s media diet—its “nutritional” content, and how it matches your
child’s needs. But she confirms that this can be hard for parents to do.
Technology giants
like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg knew this; according to The New York
Times, Jobs didn’t let his kids use the iPad, and strictly limited how much
technology his kids used at home. In August 2017, after the birth of his second
child, Zuckerberg posted an open letter to his newborn, urging her to make time
to go outside and play. “You will be busy when you’re older, so I hope you take
time to smell all the flowers and put all the leaves you want in your bucket
now,” he and his wife Priscilla Chan wrote.
Now, Common
Sense and the Center for Humane Technology, an organization of technology
industry insiders who want to “realign technology with humanity’s best
interests”, are working on a new campaign to protect young minds from the
potential of digital manipulation and addiction. The campaign, which Common
Sense says will reach 80 million of its users, is called Truth About Tech,
and will put pressure on the technology industry to make its products less
intrusive and less addictive. It wants to raise awareness among children,
parents and educators about the dangers of technology, particularly the
depressive behaviour that could result from excessive exposure to social media.
The campaign also plans to enlist technologists from across the industry to “recognize
their moral responsibility to use technology for the greater good”, as opposed
to potentially harming kids.
The Center
for Humane Technology is spearheaded by prominent industry insiders concerned
about technology companies’ willingness and ability to control the actions and
attention of billions of people. These leaders include Tristan Harris, a former
Google design ethicist, and Roger McNamee, a former Facebook investor.
While I am
not sure how well such attempts to self-govern work, it’s heartening to see
that, at least, someone is trying.
Siddharth
Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has personally led over $20
billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.
Regards
Prof. Pralhad Jadhav
Master of Library &
Information Science (NET Qualified)
Senior Manager @ Knowledge
Repository
Khaitan & Co
Twitter Handle | @Pralhad161978
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